PS2 RPG Project: Game 2- Persona 4 (Golden) Review

Note:  I thought it would be pointless to play this game twice, and I already own a copy of Persona 4 Golden on the Playstation Vita, so that's the one I'm actually reviewing here.  It's the same game, it just has more in it. 
How far did you get?  1 completion, true ending.  Pretty sure I missed a dungeon though...
How many hours did you put into it?  51

Persona 4 Golden is basically a handheld port of the Playstation 2 JRPG Persona 4, but with lots of fun extras.  Since I'll be reviewing the game as though the reader has never played either version, I will be talking about the game itself, and not just the bonus features. 

Persona 4, like it's predecessor Persona 3, are a very different style of JRPG, particularly if most of your JRPG experience comes from games like Final Fantasy.  It's still high school aged people fighting bad guys, but the game takes place in a modern Japan.  The sim aspects are what really set it apart, though.  You're not just a high school student running around dungeons and killing bad guys.  You actually get to go to high school, do extracurricular activities, and hang out with your friends. 

It's not without purpose.  The dungeon section of the game takes place in a strange world that you enter by jumping into a television.  There, you are able to unlock your "potential", which is referred to as a persona.  By hanging out with your friends and becoming closer to them, you upgrade a social link with that character, which is then used to level up your personas faster when fusing them. 

There are a ton of different menus and options in Persona 4, and to talk about them all would be a lot like trying to type out an instruction manual so I'm not going to do that.  However, it is surprisingly easy to get into considering how in depth the game is.  It's a very smart game in many places as well.  The game actually comes packaged with a lecture about Jungian philosophy, which better explains the ideas of personas and shadows.

The game is also laugh out loud hilarious at times.  Many times when I was crawling through dungeons leveling up and killing shadows, I wished I was back in the real world engaging my peers for the inevitable funny thing they would say or do.  If it wasn't something funny, it was something very sad, or very meaningful.  I've never seen a game do character development quite the way this game does.

Despite it's cartoon like appearance, this game is absolutely not for children.  For instance, one of the dungeons is bath house, and exists from the mind of one of your peers who is a bit confused about his sexuality.  Another is set in a strip club.  The game seems to try to keep things lighthearted, but things do get a bit heavy while in the dungeon areas. 

Persona 4 is also a Shin Megami Tensei title through and through.  Your persona are generally mythical creatures from several different religions, from Norse to Judeo Christianity.  If you decide to play through to the true ending, you'll also encounter a couple of characters from the very beginnings of the Shin Megami Tensei series, or more specifically, from the book that spawned it.  If you're into Shin Megami Tensei lore, you'll no doubt giggle with glee when you encounter these characters. 

The battle system is similar to other SMT titles as well.  The main goal is to exploit weaknesses so you gain extra turns in battle.  It's worked in every other SMT game, and it works here.  The battles are as fast paced as you want them to be, and you can manually set whether you want to control your other party members or not. 

Personas are used to boost your battle capability and to use abilities and spells.  You collect them from a card shuffling game after battles in which you do well in.  It's not all the different than Pokemon when it comes to collecting them.  You can fuse them together to make new, stronger personas as well.  Your supporting members all have one single persona, and their stats are based solely on that single Persona.  It makes managing your party a lot easier, and managing yourself in this game can be stressful enough. 

The only thing I really don't like about Persona 4 is that some of the dialog can get a bit cheesy.  I've never played any game as far rooted into Japanese culture as Persona 4 is, and that's great for the most part.  However, you do deal with some boring teenage drama on occasion, and it can be annoying when they start talking about a food type you've never heard of.   

As for the bonuses in the Golden version, you get television stations you can flip though that feature live performances of Persona 4's music, quizzes, and many other neat little features.  The game itself includes a new social link, new personas, and a longer endgame. 

Persona 4 (Golden) is easily one of the top 5 JRPG ever to grace to Playstation 2, and is currently the best one of the Playstation Vita.  It's deep, user friendly, and a blast to play.  If you've never played it, I can't recommend it enough.  If you don't have a Vita, this game is the best reason to get one. 

Rating:  97/100

Review! Resident Evil 6

System:  Playstation 3 (also available on Xbox 360, on PC in 2013)
How far did you get:  Finished all 4 campaigns

Few games are more frustrating than those that have potential, and Resident Evil 6 is one of those games.  This game is almost good.  It isn't good, but thanks to some broken camera controls, character controls, and some really batty design choices, this game doesn't quite reach the level of it's predecessors, or a good game for that matter.

Let's start with the presentation.  The first thing you're going to want to do when starting up Resident Evil 6 is completely ignore it's recommendations regarding lighting.  If you decide to follow the games directions instead of turning them all the way up, you're going to spend a good portion of 2 of the campaigns running around in a world you can't see.  Not only will you die a lot by enemies you didn't even know were there, you won't be able to admire the fact that the visuals in this game are actually top notch.  Resident Evil 6 is incredibly nice to look at, and easily one of the best looking games of 2012, or even this console generation.

While cranking up the lighting helps, it doesn't fix all of the visual issues.  In one campaign, you'll spend your time running around in a blizzard.  For seconds at a time, the snow will start blowing really badly and you can't see anything.  When this happens, you're not supposed to be able to see, and I get that.  However, when it's not happening, you still can't see.  I spent a couple of hours in this area trying to figure out where to go, and it was not fun.

Things get shaken up a bit when it comes to gameplay, as each campaign in slightly different, so I'll talk about each one separately.

Leon's campaign is best described as the classic Resident Evil campaign.  The majority of the enemies you'll fight are run of the mill zombies, and variations of those zombies.  The problem with Leon's campaign is that most of it takes place in underground passages and water areas.  It's dark everywhere, and due to their not being much room to move around, the poor camera controls pretty much ruin the entire experience.  If something gets behind you, prepare to spend about 10 seconds getting turned around and getting your gun aimed in the right place.  Several of the more useful abilities your character has require you to do some finger yoga with your controller.  With the exception of several instant death quick time events, Leon's campaign was painfully easy despite it's broken mechanics, and overall was absolutely zero fun to play.

Chris' campaign made a little more sense regarding the controls.  The game itself plays like a broken 3rd person shooter, and Chris' campaign at least feels more like a 3rd person shooter.  You'll fight an enemy type called the J'Avo in this campaign.  They're gun toting infected people who have much smarter AI than what you were dealing with in Leon's campaign.  Unfortunately, much like Leon's campaign, you don't really go anywhere terribly interesting and controls still suck the fun right out of the experience.

The third campaign, starring Jake Muller, is actually much more interesting in terms of locations.  You get a real variety here, and Jake is much more well rounded than Leon or Chris are.  You'll likely never have any ammo issues with Jake, as you can use his fists as an actual weapon.  Other characters can use melee attacks as well, but Jake can do it without using your stamina bar.  He also has a decent collection of guns to grab.  As with the other campaigns, control issues run rampant.  The camera becomes your worst enemy with this melee bruiser, as it tends to jump all over the place while your trying to beat down your enemies.  It takes an otherwise interesting campaign and makes you wonder why you're still playing this complete lack of fun.

Fortunately, the fourth campaign not only manages to be the best of them all, but may have actually made for a pretty good overall experience had it been the only campaign.  Here you play as Ada Wong, a person you'll be familiar with if you've played the other 3 campaigns, or other Resident Evil games.  Her story trumps the other campaigns by a pretty large margin.  Ada's campaign is more of a personal nature than the others, and it makes you feel a bit more for your character.  In addition, it manages to turn these broken mechanics into something that actually works.  She uses a hook shot type gun to fly all over the map, and strangely I still never felt lost.  She occasionally even uses it in battle, and it actually adds to the experience.  It's a blast when an infected chainsaw wielding creature comes at you, only for you to hook onto a nearby building and end up on the other side of him.  It's kind of a "ha ha, you can't catch me" kind of moment.

Probably the biggest highlight of Resident Evil 6 is the boss fights.  Every one of them is extraordinarily epic.  It was a bit disappointing that Ada ends up fighting alongside Leon to attack the same final boss you fight in Leon's campaign, but it was still nice to get a different perspective on the fight.    Each fight has particular game mechanics you need to take advantage of, and if you don't figure them out fast enough, you're dead.  I took these as learning experiences and didn't find it to take away from fights.  Autosave spots are very frequent in this game, so you never have to play through too much of the game multiple times due to unfair deaths.

Overall, I'd only recommend this to hardcore fans of the series.  For the most part, it's a broken 3rd person shooter that isn't even sure it wants to be one.  It's far too long for a game that is rarely fun, and no amount of gorgeous visuals and epic set pieces is going to change that.

Rating:  41/100

PS2 RPG Project: Game 1- Final Fantasy X Review

Did you complete the game?  Yes
Did you do any of the side missions?  I got all of the celestial weapons (I DESERVE PRAISE FOR THIS) and defeated Omega. 
How many hours did you put into it?  83

On December 20, 2001, Square unleashed the first Final Fantasy entry for the Playstation 2.  When it was first released, it received almost universal positive critical reactions and fan reactions alike.  As time passed and more Final Fantasy games were released, the series seemed to be in a hard spot, and many fans and critics sited Final Fantasy X as the starting point for the decline.  Does that mean that if you were to play it now, you wouldn't have a good time?  Was it not as good as we remember it being?  Was it really responsible for the decline in the quality of the series?

No, yes, and maybe.

My current experience was Final Fantasy X may have actually been better than the first time I played it.  I'm thinking the reason for this may be that the newer games in the series have been so lackluster, that it was nice to play one when the series was in it's prime.

Things were changed up a bit from it's predecessors, though.  You don't have a numbered level in FFX.  It chose to try something different with it's sphere grid system, and this may be one of the few times Square tried something different with Final Fantasy and it actually worked very well.  It worked so well, in fact, that some games even stole the idea (here's looking at you, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga).  Rather than leveling up once every 10 to 50 fights or so like in most JRPGs, your characters would receive a sphere level every 2 fights or so.  Each sphere only increases one stat, but it made it feel like you were improving on a more regular basis than most games in the genre.  Later in the game, it also gives you some control, as you can split into other characters sphere grids and learn their abilities.  This came with a downside, too.  If you decide to level up high enough to fight some of the high end monsters in the monster arena, some of the characters inherent abilities seem a bit useless.  For instance, if you were to run someone through Tidus' sphere grid, which is high in agility, they'll be able to hit fast enemies just as well as Tidus can.  However, if you run someone through Lulu's sphere, they still don't seem to hit the damage marks that Lulu's magic does.

The side quests come with a downside, too.  They aren't introduced until the very end of the game, when you acquire the airship.  If you get all of the celestial weapons and don't flee from battles, you'll be leveled up enough that you'll likely be able to kill the final boss with one overdrive attack.  You'll still have problems with the monster arena (at 83 hours into the game there were still several I could not take down), but being able to take down the final boss in one hit shows some major balancing issues.

Speaking of side quests, getting the celestial weapons, crests, and sigils was unseasonably hard in some instances, more specifically the sigils.  To get the sigil for Tidus, you have to play a chocobo racing mini game, but you have to play it pretty much perfectly.  It took me several days of playing to master it, and the mini game isn't even fun.  A couple of the others were just as frustrating, possibly even worse.  Let's just say you will play a LOT of blitzball.

Fortunately, blitzball is actually kind of fun once you start getting good at it.  In fact, I began to think it was kind of neat that it came packaged in this game, as it is surprisingly in depth to be a mini game.  Though it probably would have been poorly received, Square probably could have gotten away with selling it as a full fledged sports game and charging full price for it.

In regards to it's influence to the future games in the franchise, I found that the game was pretty linear, and designed a lot like Final Fantasy XIII.  Given, Square took everything about Final Fantasy X that made it great completely out of FFXIII, but I can see why people would site FFX as a blueprint.

Visually, the game actually stands up pretty well.  I noticed a few graphical glitches here and there, but this was a time when your system didn't connect online and force you to download patches for your game.  None of it was game breaking, and considering the scale of the world of Spira, that's a pretty decent accomplishment in my book.  It looks a lot better than most of the JRPGs that came out after it on the PS2, and the cinematics look legitimately awesome, even now.  The mouth animations are a little funky when the characters are talking, but it's forgivable considering the hardware limitations.

The audio is sort of a mixed bag.  The music is mostly great.  The voice acting is where things get a little weird.  American voice actors have never been a strong suit for Square, and this is no different.  Most of the side cast is voiced well enough, like Auron, Rikku, Lulu, and Wakka.  I have some issues with Tidus and Yuna, though.  Tidus' laugh is not only grating, but placed in some very odd places.  It could have been an easy fix had the voice actor just laughed a few seconds less, but instead of doing that they just let him sound awkward.  Yuna was similar in that regard, and the way she said "ok" drove me nuts.  It just sounded off, and the voice actor didn't seem like she was putting much effort into it.

I really like story in Final Fantasy X.  It's not as in depth as Final Fantasy VI, VII, or VIII, but it's much easier to comprehend.  There's a lot of emotion and tragedy, and it's fun to keep up with as you play the game.  The side cast all have very interesting stories and it's fun to unravel all of their secrets.  Tidus, however, sucks.  His backstory and story in general is fine, but he's one of my least favorite lead characters in a Final Fantasy game simply from the way he acts.  He's childish and kind of a moron, and while you watch Yuna mature and become a more interesting person, Tidus just keeps being an idiot.  

The battle system is probably the thing that has changed the least in this entry.  It's actually much easier than in the previous games, as it lets go of the ATB bar and just lets you take turns normally.  If you just sit there, the enemy isn't going to attack you.  Considering you need to think about who you're going to use and who you might switch out to better benefit the battle, this style of battle system is very convenient.

Overall, I'd say playing Final Fantasy X again (or for the first time) is a safe bet if you're looking for one of better PS2 rpgs.  It's not the best one in my opinion, but it is a blast to play and tells a story very much worth telling.

8/10 
 

Review! Hotline Miami

System:  PC
How far did you get?  Finished one playthrough, including the resolution and bonus mission.

You're dead, indeed!

Hotline Miami is an indie game concoction of a lot of different kinds of games.  The best way I can think to describe it is to say it has the visuals and gameplay from the first Metal Gear (8-bit and all), the ultraviolence and weird story of something like Killer 7, and that "keep dying until you figure out how to not die" challenge you got from Dark Souls. 

So does all of that somehow work?

It does, indeed!

The gameplay is incredibly fast for what I would call a stealth game.  If an enemy notices you, you might have a second to react before you're dead.  You only get one life, too, but dying isn't too much of a hassle.  Each time you die, you'll only have to start over at the beginning of the floor you're on in the building.  Some enemies have guns, some have melee weapons, and some are, well, dogs.  You get to put on a mask before each level, each giving you a different advantage.  I must say that several of the masks you unlock seemed kind of pointless.  I played with the mask that made dogs not attack you for about 7 levels, and once I unlocked the quiet gun mask, I didn't touch another mask the rest of the game.

The stealth is done quite well.  Your instincts will tell you to go after those guns, but that's not always a good idea, especially early in the level.  If you fire off a gun, you can expect a good portion of the people and dogs on the floor to hear it and come after you.  It's hard enough to take on one 90 mph asshole with a shotgun, so you can imagine what it's like taking on six of them.  Probably my favorite way to take out enemies is to knock them down using a door, then jumping on them and beating the immortal piss out of them.  It's quite satisfying.

I would say the game looks purposely bad, but I don't think it's fair to say it looks bad.  Sure, it looks like an old Nintendo game, but it's colorful and trippy and induces feelings of both excitement and freaking out.  For a game as unusual as this, you'd expect some weird art, and this definitely delivers that.  There is blood everywhere, and the enemies die in enough different ways that you can play through the entire game and not get bored of it.

Another thing worth mentioning is the music.  I always thought 8-bit game music sounded odd and interesting anyway, but this game's music fits that definition like a glove, even if it's not really 8-bit music.  It's a bit meatier, though, with some hard hitting beats and a dance music feel.

I don't want to say too much about the story, but suffice to say it's pretty interesting, and creepy.  The general idea is you wake up to a message on your answering machine that gives you a totally random message, but hides an address in each one.  You go to the address, kill everyone there, then go to a restaurant or video store and talk to some weird guy.  Then you go home.  You do this for most of the levels, but everything gets progressively more unusual, particularly the sections when you talk to the strange guy.

I'm not going to say this is one of the most unique gameplay experiences I've had.  I've played games that play similar to this before, but none of them were anywhere near as well executed as this.  The game has very low system requirements, so if you have a PC of any kind, I'd highly recommend checking out the hidden gem.

9/10

Review! Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

System:  Playstation Vita (also available on 3DS)
How far did you get?:  Full completion.  Platinum Trophy.

The visual novel genre is not particularly popular these days.  After all, we live in a time where 140 characters or less is not only acceptable, but forced in some places.  Reading is time consuming, and we value our time.

However, we also complain that modern entertainment media is stupid and anti intellectual.  Television is controlled and designed for mass idiot consumption.  Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are outlets for dumb teenagers to spout off their opinions as though they were facts and insult anyone who disagrees.  Call of Duty is made for twitch gamers who's minds grow smaller every day they play.

Well, as they say, you can't have your cake and eat it too.   Perhaps that scary visual novel with all the words and stuff is exactly what you're looking for, and you just don't know it yet.

Zero Escape:  Virtue's Last Reward is 30-35 hour visual novel style game with occasional mind puzzles to break up the monotony a bit.  See, they're even trying to help keep you from getting bored!

It also isn't designed for children, for multiple reasons.  The general premise shares similarities to the Saw films, but it's far more in depth.  Your character and 8 others are stuck in a building being controlled by what seems like an evil person, and sometimes you have to make some rather difficult choices to get out.  People will die.  Tensions rise, and people get very upset.  It's all rather bleak.  You are forced to play a game, called the Nonery Game.  You have to group up with others in order to complete puzzles, so you can gather cards to use in the second part of the game, the AB Game.  This is where things get a little tense.  You are forced to go into rooms, and vote "ally or betray" in order to increase or decrease a number on a watch you are wearing.  Your goal is to reach 9 points, and if you do, you can leave.  However, the door only opens once, and once the door closes, everyone left behind is stuck there forever.  In order to avoid spoilers, I won't say what happens if it reaches 0, but needless to say it's not good.  An important thing to point out is that this game is a sequel to another game that appeared on the Nintendo DS titled 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors.  The story does connect, and while the game can certainly be played on it's own, it has much more to offer those that played it's prequel. 

In addition to the mature subject matter, the game focuses on a very complicated story involving the 4th dimension, conscious time travel, and a whole lot of math and science.  The puzzles aren't much different, especially regarding the math and science.  If you failed algebra, you may need to give this one a pass. or at least get very familiar with a strategy guide.

The story branches off into many paths.  The game has 22 endings, and requires many different choices in order to see all of them.  Each play through take about 3 hours, but you'll get but a fraction of what the story has to offer by only playing one path.  Fortunately, the game has a "flow" option, where you can view the story on a graph, and choose parts of the story where decisions were made and directly go there so you don't have to play the whole story again.  Occasionally, you'll see a a scene you've already seen in another timeline, and the game gives you the option to "skip" it, where it will fast forward through everything you've already seen and stop when new dialog pops up.  

As for visuals and sound, it's a competent looking game, but there isn't a lot of animation.  It's works more on a screen by screen basis, but things on each screen do move.  You can also maneuver about the puzzle rooms using the Vita touch screen.  The game doesn't look like anime, but the character models still look very anime inspired, so if that bothers you, it wouldn't hurt to keep that in mind.  The music fits the mood very well, and the voice acting is actually quite good, in both English and Japanese.

If you're the kind of gamer who feels like things are getting a little too easy, or a little too brainless in modern gaming, your prayers have been answered, assuming you're willing to be patient and deal with a book or two worth of voiced text.  It can be relentless and sometimes a bit too wordy, but it's also incredibly engaging and who knows?  You might learn a thing or two, as well.

Rating:  9/10

I will finish every PS2 RPG and review all of them

Yep.  That is the task I'm giving myself. 

I'm using 3 lists as a point of reference: 

1.  http://www.listal.com/list/rpg-world-ps2-edition
2.  http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?73673-RPG-List-for-the-PS2
3.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bm8ikWu09M (see description)

I'm using that first list as a central base, as the games aren't in alphabetical order and I can play through the list from top to bottom without having to play all the games and their sequels back to back.  I'll be using the other 2 lists to add in any games the first list may have missed. 

So let's handle a quick Q & A:

Q:  Are you really going to do this? 
A:  I'm going to try!

Q:  If you've already finished a game in the past, are you going to review it without playing it again?
A:  Nope.  I'm going to play all of these games from start to finish, even if I have played them before.

Q:  From start to finish?  Even the bad ones? 
A:  Yep. 

Q:  Are you going to play only PS2 games for the duration of this?
A:  Absolutely not.  I have several other games in the near future I want to play, and I may throw up reviews for those as well.  Torchlight 2, Borderlands 2, Mists of Panderia, and Persona 4 Golden may slow my progress a bit.  I'm doing this at my own pace.  Keep in mind, rpgs are long games.  You won't get a review a night.  In many cases, you may have to wait as long as a month for one.  

Q:  When are you starting?
A:  I'm currently trying to watch all the Star Trek: TNG episodes (I'm near the end of season 4) and I'm playing Mortal Kombat on Vita.   When I'm done, I'll start the first game, which I believe is Final Fantasy X.  I've completed it before so it shouldn't take me long.  I'd say to look for the first review by the beginning of October, maybe a little before. 

Q:  Why are you doing this? 
A:  The PS2 era of rpg gaming is gone.  There's no current system that competes with it, handheld or otherwise.  I miss it.  I want to experience it again, and I want to share the experience.  Many will say the SNES was the golden age of the rpg, but I argue that the PS2 era was at least on par, if not better.  If my reviews can convince others to grab some great PS2 rpgs and experience some of the games I have, then I'll be happy. 

Q:  Are you going to skip any games? 
A:  Actually, yes.  The MMOs.  You can't "beat" MMOs and I never played any PS2 MMOs when the system was at it's most popular anyway.  The first list contains no MMOs, so I will play all of those games, even the strategy rpgs. 

Review!: Shadow Complex XBOX LIVE ARCADE

Shadow Complex, when first announced, was met with a lot of hype. Gamers and journalists alike were claiming the game would be graphically equal to a full priced Xbox 360 game. The game was being made by Epic, known for their largely popular Gears of War series, and to a lesser extent, Unreal Tournament.

While I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's a $15 game worth $60, it's definitely a huge bargain.

Visually, it is very impressive for a Xbox Live Arcade game, but it's no Gears of War either. Some of the animations get a little funky in places, but I didn't see anything wrong in the textures department. For $15, this is a very pretty game.

I expected a bit more than I got out of the story. It's pretty cut and dry, but it doesn't detract from the experience. Apparently it's based on a book by Orson Scott Card, but I'm not going to pretend I know what that means, as I haven't read it. You play as Jason Flemming, a regular guy from a military family. Basically, he comes off as a regular guy, but in reality he learned a lot from his father, and is very capable of defending himself. He's out on a date with a girl, supposedly going caving. The girl gets ahead of him, and finds that he's stumbled across a secret base ran by a bunch of evil guys trying to destroy San Francisco. She gets captured, and he goes to rescue her. You can almost figure out what's going to happen from here on your own.

Where this game really shines is it's gameplay. I had an absolute blast playing this game. It has the upgrade system of Super Metroid, the leveling system of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and the map system of both of these games. To put it another way, the game plays like a combination of two of the best games ever made. It's not without it's own flavor, though. The side scrolling levels are tinged with background enemies that you can turn and shoot at. The weapons and upgrades are all amazingly fun, and the boss battles are challenging and epic.

Though this games falls short of perfection, it shines hardest in the most important place: it's a really fun game. Even if this isn't the best looking game you've played this year and the story is nothing special, you'll certainly get tons of pure enjoyment out of this one. In the end, does anything else matter?

Score: 86/100